The recent prosperity in electronics and communication industries has brought computer network into all kinds of places, such as in family, in school and in business. The computer network has eliminated the limitation of spatial separation and largely changed the style of communication between people. Since portable electronic products, such as a laptop computer, personal digital assistant, have also gained their popularity. The user of these electronic products not only needs a high speed network connection, but also needs to get access to the network anywhere without looking for a network socket to plug in. Therefore, wireless local area network is developed.
Wireless local area network (WLAN) performs local wireless network connection by using a wireless network module, such as a wireless card or a PCMCIA card in combination with a wireless access point to transmit and receive wireless data signals and connect to the Internet via the wireless access point. One can thus get access to the Internet resources.
Wireless broadband network service has become very popular worldwide. Many international airports, hotels, coffee shops provide similar services. The user is required to bring in his/her own portable electronic products (e.g. laptop computer or personal digital assistant), which include a wireless card, to get wireless access to the Internet by entering the account name and password acquired from the network service supplier. Such wireless network service has the following advantages.    1. The computer can get connected to the network without being restricted to certain network wiring scheme.    2. The wireless network connection does not require any compliance of wiring and socket specification, which can save a lot of time and man power in network installation.    3. According to the IEEE802.11b standard, the wireless access point can provide a transmission speed up to 11 Mbps, which is roughly 200 times faster than a 56 Kbps modem. This speed can satisfy most of the everyday file transmission requirement.    4. New users are easily added to the network without considering the limited number of access points in conventional wired network.
Due to the advantages set forth above, Intel Corporation developed a Centrino®) mobile processor. The mobile processor includes a Pentium-M processor, an 802.11b wireless module and an 855 chipset. This mobile processor is primarily used in laptop computers, such that the computer can easily be connected to a wireless access point and the network without using an external PCMCIA wireless network card. This can largely enhance the capacity of the laptop computer. Nevertheless, most of the computers now still require a wireless network card or a built-in 802.11b wireless module on the motherboard in order to get access to the wireless access point and the network.
However, wireless communication modules are often enabled when starting up electronic communication devices. The wireless communication module can then search and detect for available wireless channels. If the user forgets to turn off the wireless communication module, the wireless communication module will continuously search and detect for available wireless channels. In this manner, the wireless communication module will continuously radiate electromagnetic waves, which is a great waste of electricity and very likely to bring high risk to the health of the user. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a wireless communication module that can be turned on or off in proper timing or during a certain period of time.